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What’s the best way to know if you have product market fit?

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Before Growth – Sam AltmanA startup that prematurely targets a growth goal often ends up making a nebulous product that some users sort of like and papering over this with growth hacking. That sort of works at least, it will fool investors for awhile until they start digging into retention numbers but eventually the music stops.

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Before Growth – Sam AltmanI think the right initial metric is do any users love our product so much they spontaneously tell other people to use it? Until that’s a yes, founders are generally better off focusing on this instead of a growth target.

David Jackson (Founder, Seeking Alpha) Why startups shouldn’t scale prematurely | A Founder’s NotebookDon’t scale before you have product-market fit. You’ll burn money, delay true success, and be miserable. What’s so bad about scaling prematurely? Low ROI, high burn rate: Sales and marketing for a product without product-market fit will suffer from low conversions and low renewals. Frustration: When you don’t have product-market fit, everything seems too hard, and everyone is frustrated. Not building permanent value: When you eventually fix your … (read more)

Charlie O’Donnell (Partner Brooklyn Bridge Ventures) Growth is a Commodity — This is going to be BIG…If there’s one thing we’ve basically figured out in the digital world, it’s marketing. It’s table stakes. You spend some dollars to get more dollars out. It’s not complicated. That’s why I care much more about engagement–do people like what you built, versus whether or not more people used it today than they did yesterday. Plus, the startup world is littered with companies that grew exponentially without becoming successful–Fab, Turntable, Dailyb… (read more)

Sean Ellis (CEO at GrowthHackers) Using Survey.ioHere’s an objective metric that removes emotion from the scaling decision while also giving you other important qualitative information. The key question on the survey is: How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]? Very disappointed, Somewhat disappointed, Not disappointed (it isn’t really that useful), N/A – I no longer use [product]. If you find that over 40% of your users are saying that they would be “very disappointed” without … (read more)

Albert Wenger (Partner at Union Square Ventures, Former President of del.icio.us) Startup Management » Product/Market Fit is a ContinuumYou know you’ve achieved product-market fit when the customers intuitively understand what need the product fills for them, and they have no trouble using it, in fact they enjoy using it… in fact they start telling their friends about it, maybe even telling the world about it on Twitter or other places. That’s how you know if you’ve got product-market fit.

David Jackson (Founder, Seeking Alpha) Four myths about product-market fit | A Founder’s NotebookMy personal view is that product-market fit is a continuum; there are degrees of product-market fit. You should only scale when it’s clear that you’re fairly far along the continuum of product-market fit.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) Burn Rate – AVCIt is dangerous to ramp up headcount and burn until you are certain that you have the right product and the right people and processes in the organization to support the product. And early revenue traction, often driven by a passionate founder, can be a nasty head fake.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) Product > Strategy > Business Model – AVCGetting product right means finding product market fit. It does not mean launching the product. It means getting to the point where the market accepts your product and wants more of it.

Jerry Neuman (Venture Capitalist at Neu Venture Capital) How to kiss your elbow | Reaction WheelMarc Andreessen says “you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. ” Unfortunately, this is simply not true. In B-to-B startups you can have a lot of buzz and a few amazing clients banging your door down and still have a product that doesn’t really do much. Or you can have a product that is absolutely amazing that great clients are beta-testing but that no one is paying for.

William Mougayar (Chief Evangelist, Advocate Marketing at Influitive, formerly CEO/founder of Engagio) Startup Management » Product/Market Fit is a ContinuumIf there is no market, even a great product and a great team will not get you there. if you can’t realize the business model, there is no Product/Market Fit. If there is no retention and referrals, there is no Product/Market Fit. Instead of building new features, or rebuilding from scratch, try pointing your product at a new market.

Marc Andreesen (Co-Founder & General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz) How you know when you’ve hit product-market fit | A Founder’s NotebookYou can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast a… (read more)

Paul Buchheit (Partner at Y Combinator) Default Alive or Default Dead?A related problem that I see a lot is premature scaling—founders take a small business that isn’t really working (bad unit economics, typically) and then scale it up because they want impressive growth numbers. This is similar to over-hiring in that it makes the business much harder to fix once it’s big, plus they are bleeding cash really fast.

Raju Rishi (General Partner @ RRE Ventures) When Revenue Isn’t The AnswerClosed deals and sales velocity are not exclusive measures of product/ market fit. Maybe, among your first customers, there are wide variations in the core use cases for the product. Maybe your team is struggling with lengthy sales cycles. Maybe you find yourself significantly altering your pitch for different target customers and creating multiple marketing messages along the way

Naval Ravikant (Founder, CEO & Co – Maintainer at AngelList) “The Anatomy of a Fundable Startup”, by Naval Ravikant (Founder, AngelList) on VimeoHow much traction is enough? How much growth in enough? It depends a lot on the startup, but generally an investor will not be impressed if you say we’re growing at 10% a month. That means you’ll double in a year and believe it or not in the startup game that’s not enough for an early stage company.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) Growth – AVCThings like gaming Facebook’s open graph can temporarily stimulate growth that is not sustainable long term. Investors can be faked out by things like that. Gaming Google’s search algorithms is another way that has been done in the past. When we look at growth, we look for authentic, organic, and sustainable growth that is not overly dependent on a single source, particularly a source the startup doesn’t control. That takes some experience to det… (read more)

Raju Rishi (General Partner @ RRE Ventures) When Revenue Isn’t The AnswerAchieving product/ market fit is the transformative moment in the life of a startup. It is the moment of metamorphosis, where a company aligns messaging, marketing, target customers, sales methodology, product roadmap, and operating metrics. This moment cannot be bypassed, faked, overlooked, or ignored. So be disciplined. Don’t get caught up in the expectations of customers, investors, or yourselves. For in the absence of product market fit, more… (read more)

Mariya Yao (Founder at Xanadu) Lessons Learned: Rapid Iteration for Mobile App Designthe question Sean Ellis popularized, where you ask your users, “How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use our product?” and have them answer with either, “Very Disappointed,” “Somewhat Disappointed,” “Not Disappointed,” or “I no longer use the product. ” Sean did research across hundreds of startups and discovered that companies that had fewer than 40% of their users answer “Very Disappointed” tended to struggle with building a suc… (read more)

Mariya Yao (Founder at Xanadu) Lessons Learned: Rapid Iteration for Mobile App DesignOn a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends?” You mark those who answer 0-6 as Detractors, 9-10 as Promoters, and 7-8 as Neutral. Your Net Promoter score is the percent of Promoters minus your percentage of Detractors, which should be a number between -100 and +100. The world’s most successful companies typically score around +50, and top performing tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon regularly score over +7… (read more)

Slava Akhmechet (Founder at RethinkDB) 57 startup lessonsProduct comes first. If people love your product, the tiniest announcements will get attention. If people don’t love your product, no amount of marketing effort will help.